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| Guido Reni Massacre of the Innocents 1611 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna |
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| Guido Reni Massacre of the Innocents (detail) 1611 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna |
from Salvete, Flores Martyrum
All hail! ye infant Martyr flowers,
Cut off in life's first dawning hours:
As rosebuds snapt in tempest strife,
When Herod sought your Saviour's life.
You, tender flock of lambs, we sing,
First victims slain for Christ your King:
Beneath the altar's heav'nly ray
With martyr-palms and crowns ye play!
– Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (AD 348-405), translated by John Mason Neale (1856)
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| Guido Reni The Triumph of Samson ca. 1611-12 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna |
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| Guido Reni The Triumph of Samson (detail) ca. 1611-12 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna |
from Samson Agonistes
O miserable change! is this the man,
from A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
That invincible Samson, far renowned,
The dread of Israel's foes, who with a strength
Equivalent to Angels walked their streets
None offering fight; who single combatant
Dueled their Armies ranked in proud array,
Himself an Army?
– John Milton (1671)
from Saint Francis of Assisi
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| Bernardo Strozzi St Francis ca. 1610-15 oil on canvas Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
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| Bernardo Strozzi St Francis (detail) ca. 1610-15 oil on canvas Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
from Saint Francis of Assisi
The plain's hatching now
after rainless months.
A dust devil rips
through a peach orchard
down there, a seam snuffed
by falling dust-fruit.
Behind the vine rows'
shriveled abundance
a low fire runs
ragged by the ditch,
flaying the pale sod.
The voided skins wave.
September, thirsting,
sings our Hosannah,
shrieks red poverties
to old heaven's eye.
– W.S. Di Piero (1992)
from the Book of Lamentations, chapter 3
– W.S. Di Piero (1992)
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| Leonello Spada The Lamentation ca. 1610-11 oil on canvas Musée Fabre, Montpellier |
from the Book of Lamentations, chapter 3
I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.
Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.
My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.
He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.
He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.
He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.
– King James Bible (1611)
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| Orazio Gentileschi Young Woman playing a Violin (St Cecilia) ca. 1612 oil on canvas Detroit Institute of Arts |
from A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arise ye more than dead.
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And music's power obey.
– John Dryden (1687)
Saint Sebastian di Sodoma
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| Giulio Cesare Procaccini St Sebastian tended by Angels (detail) ca. 1610-12 oil on canvas Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
Saint Sebastian di Sodoma
How did Saint Sebastian die?
Arrows piercèd throat and thigh
which only knew before that time
The dolors of a concubine.
Near above him, hardly over,
hovered his gold martyr's crown.
Even Mary from her tower
Of heaven leaned a little down.
And as she leaned she raised a corner
of a cloud through which to spy.
Sweetly troubled Mary murmured
as she watched the arrows fly.
And as the cup that was profaned
gave up its sweet intemp'rate wine
All the golden bells of heaven
praised an emp'ror's concubine.
– Tennessee Williams (begun in 1949 in Rome, published in 1954)
The Jacob's Ladder
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| Domenico Fetti Jacob's Dream ca. 1613-14 oil on canvas Detroit Institute of Arts |
The Jacob's Ladder
The stairway is not
a thing of gleaming strands
a radiant evanescence
for angels' feet that only glance in their tread, and need not
touch the stone.
It is of stone.
A rosy stone that takes
a glowing tone of softness
only because behind it the sky is a doubtful, a doubting
night gray.
A stairway of sharp
angles, solidly built.
One sees that the angels must spring
down from one step to the next, giving a little
lift of the wings:
and a man climbing
must scrape his knees, and bring
the grip of his hands into play. The cut stone
consoles his groping feet. Wings brush past him.
The poem ascends.
– Denise Levertov (1965)
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| Bartolomeo Manfredi Cupid Chastised 1613 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Bartolomeo Manfredi Cupid Chastised (detail) 1613 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
Defiance to Cupid
Not in this grave
will I lie
more than a summer
holiday!
Dig it deep, no
matter, I
will break that sleep
and run away.
– William Carlos Williams (1939)
from Leaving Mary Magdalene
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| Carlo Saraceni Penitent Magdalene ca. 1614 oil on canvas Gallerie dell' Accademia, Venice |
from Leaving Mary Magdalene
She said her ex-husband
was a general in the Mexican Army,
a spy, a brain surgeon
who implanted circuits in her mind,
then stalked her, followed her
even down these corridors
that end in a frosted glass door,
an alcove with a slit sofa,
a pie dish full of white ash
and a lucite picture of Saint Jude:
and here she found me
with my name scratched from my bracelet,
I too longing for the lover
who healed me in a past life.
– D. Nurkse (1998)
from Monster
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| Ferraù Fenzoni The Flagellation ca. 1615 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes |
from Monster
. . . the flimsiness of my resolve, the silliness of saints and monsters,
conversations with a being who can't plausibly exist,
this mockery of flagellation: this is my defective heart,
this my amputated foot, this the bandage from around my head.
A monster dies in the middle of his trial, another
denies the power of the court, two more evade arrest . . .
– Brook Emery (2007)
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| Valentin de Boulogne Musical Party ca. 1615 oil on canvas Indianapolis Museum of Art |
Party Ship
You are a
land I can't
stand leaving
and can't not.
My party ship
is pulling out.
We all have
hats. I try to
toot some notes
you'll understand
but this was not
our instrument
or plan.
– Kay Ryan (2013)